


As Long As I Can Hear Your Voice

by themissing



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Complete, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-18
Updated: 2014-06-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 04:59:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1806160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themissing/pseuds/themissing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Castiel had stuck around in the aftermath of Jo and Ellen dying? Pre-slash ficlet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Long As I Can Hear Your Voice

“What are you, allergic to giving me peace of mind? You better put me on speed-dial, kid.” 

“Yes ma’am.”

Only Dean hadn’t done that. He had let them fall into the back of his mind, a place where he’d thought they’d be safe. But nothing and nobody he ever cared for was safe, Dean should have known that by now.

When Ellen and Jo up and died, a little bit of them all blew up in that hardware store with them. They were now ghosts in a house that had never seemed so empty before. In a daze they drifted in and out of rooms, one after the other. It was painful to share the same space with the others, but none of them wanted to be truly alone. Even Cas had stayed, his search for God put on hold for the moment. Dean was oddly grateful for that.

During one night’s sleepless wanderings Dean walked in on Cas in one of the downstairs bedrooms. He was curled up on his side in bed, listening to some talk show on the radio. Which in itself was nerve-wracking enough, because why the hell did an angel need a bed? And that was precisely as far as Dean’s brain would allow him to go along THAT track.

“Hey”, was all he could think of to say as he and leaned against the doorframe. Cas rose up to his elbows, and Dean did his very best to ignore the fact Cas had been holding a pillow to his chest like a lost child.

“Hello, Dean”, Cas rumbled dejectedly and settled back in.

Dean shuffled from foot to foot, suddenly desperate for conversation. “Missing Angel Radio again?” he said, pointing towards the portable machine on the small table. 

“Yes,” Cas answered simply and honestly, a confession muttered into the pillow. “But it’s better when you’re here. Human presence, especially yours, seems to be… soothing.” 

Dean’s brain just about short-circuited at that. “Oh. Huh.”

Cas’ eyes found his. Did they absolutely have to be that ridiculous shade of blue? Not that Dean had noticed. The angel slid up to a sitting position. 

“Come on in. Talk to me.” There was a ‘please’ in there somewhere, unheard but still painful. In the midst of his own loss Dean hadn’t really considered how Cas was coping with being cut off from Heaven. If the silence of the past few days was close to driving Dean mad, what must it feel like to Castiel? The dude was used to hearing his brothers and sisters 24/7, and now he was stuck with just the mud monkeys for company.

Dean found himself walking up to the bed and flopping against the headboard. It was only when he started to kick off his shoes that he really noticed the chair next to the bed. Like, RIGHT next to it. Just standing there, all innocent-like. And his treacherous legs had carried him straight into the bed itself. It was a big bed, and there was a completely decent empty space between them, but Dean could still feel a redness creeping behind his ears. He ducked down to pull off the other shoe, very pointedly not looking at Cas or the villainous chair.

“So… what do you wanna talk about?” There really was a very limited amount of subjects they could tackle that would be considered “soothing” right now. Nothing about what had happened in Carthage. Cas’ personal history was a definite bust, and Dean was in no mood to rehash his own childhood. Any “safe” pop culture conversation would just go right over Castiel’s head. Dean looked over at the angel.

“I really don’t know.” A puzzled crease appeared between Cas’ eyes – it was obvious he was going through the options as well, and finding them just as lacking. He sighed and wriggled back down onto his side, folding the pillow under his head. “The subject’s not important. I just need to hear your voice. That’s enough for me.”

Honestly, Dean really, really wished Cas would stop SAYING things like that, or at least not say them so reverently. The angel went on, glancing up at Dean from under his lashes as he spoke. 

“Tell me a story. Or even better yet, poetry. Did you know the Neanderthals created the most exquisite poems?”

Dean couldn’t help snorting, loud and rude. “Okay, I’ll take your word for that. But I don’t know any poetry. Well.” He thought about it. “I guess song lyrics are a kind of poetry. Would that do?” Cas smiled, a fleeting little thing, and nodded. 

Dean leaned back against the headboard and mentally went through the mellower part of his internal mix tape. He couldn’t believe he was actually agreeing to do this, but he’d be damned if he went half-way with it now. ‘Freebird’? Yeah, a little too ironic right now. And why oh why did his brain insist on morbidly supplying the entire words to ‘The End’ right now? He actually even tried out ‘Smoke On The Water’, but found it impossible not to grunt out the riff at the start. The bed bounced a little as he shook his shoulders, and Cas squinted his eyes at him. Dean threw a cheeky grin, which earned him an eye-roll.

Oh, he finally thought of a good one, and it was nice and long even without the endless minutes of strumming guitars. He cleared his throat and began to recite, a steady, no-frills rhythm to his voice.

_There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold  
And she's buying a stairway to heaven…_

Dean could have just about kicked himself when he realized his mistake. He groaned. “Dammit! I’m sorry, Cas, you probably don’t want to be hearing the ‘H’ word right about now.”

“That’s alright”, Cas said, propping himself up on his elbows again and tilting his head at Dean. “It sounds like an interesting song. Could you… Could you perhaps sing it out loud? I know you can sing, although you pretend not to. Which really is quite absurd, by the way.”

Dean tried very, VERY hard not to think about where Cas might have heard him sing properly, since these days he only did it in the shower or when he was riding out alone. “Um. Okay. If you want. “ Cas settled back into the pillow with a weak smile and a faint rustle that reminded Dean of the sound his wings made. 

This one Dean could actually even play on guitar, but he’d just about rather have faced another pack of hellhounds than admitted to that. With a wan smile Dean remembered Jo saying she was used to hunters trying to get into her pants with a six-pack, some pizza and Zeppelin IV. Well, whoever said you needed to be original had never reaped the benefits of a small-town rock ’n’ roll bar.

Dean's fingers flexed a little as he went through the beginning chords in his head. He began to sing, and after a few shaky lines could feel his voice starting to resonate within his chest. The whole moment seemed subdued, oddly private in too many ways, and Dean kept his voice low. Anyway, he was sure Cas would be able to hear him if he was whispering. 

Sometimes he was terrified Cas could hear him THINK, and lived in mortal fear of the angel popping into his dreams again. For a whole plethora of reasons Dean wasn’t too fond of his own dreams these days.

_Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run  
There's still time to change the road you're on_

Well if that wasn’t just a kick in the jewels right now. The road they had chosen had led to Ellen and Jo dying. Was it the right one? Sure, there was the whole “avoiding the apocalypse” thing, but did they really have a snowball’s chance in Hell of stopping that anyway? 

Was free will really worth it, in the end? Dean had to think it was.

“ _Oooh, it makes me wonder_ ” he sang again softly, almost to himself. The easy-listening part of the song was over. He could hear the guitar starting to ramp up inside his head, so he remained silent and stole a glimpse at the figure huddled next to him.

Cas had closed his eyes and was breathing deeply. Dean knew for a fact that angels didn’t sleep, not even kinda-sorta-almost fallen ones. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even entirely sure they needed to BREATHE. But there was Cas anyway, looking peaceful and relaxed and so very… young, was the absurd word that came to Dean’s mind, even though Castiel in all likelihood predated the entire frigging planet. 

Seeing him like this, so vulnerable, pulled at Dean’s heartstrings in ways he flatly refused to acknowledge. This was the same creature who had growled at him, “I dragged you out of Hell, I can throw you back in”, and he had absolutely believed it. A soldier of God, not some lost kitten curled up on the bedspread.

Dean was surprised to find his hand hovering above the dark mess of hair, fighting the urge to run his fingers through it. He pulled his hand back and held it in a fist on his chest, staring out at his own feet stretched out on the bed. 

Even though he knew Cas couldn’t possibly be asleep, Dean got up as quietly as he could. He got as far as the door when he heard his name called out. 

“Dean.” Even in that gravelly voice it was a soft sound, a warm blanket of trust he could have wrapped around his shoulders if he wanted to. If he could let himself think like that. “Thank you.”

Dean had to bite the inside of his cheek at the gratitude in that tone. No, don’t thank me, don’t you dare thank me because I’ve caused nothing but trouble for you ever since you pulled my ass kicking and screaming out of the fire. 

Don’t thank me because you’re the one who gave me a chance to be a man again instead of just another black-eyed beast. 

Don’t thank me because I don’t think I was worth all the hassle, never will be, and you poor bastard actually have faith in me and I’m so, so sorry for that. 

He said none of this out loud, just stood with his hand on the door handle. Without looking back he shrugged. “Uh, yeah. No problem. Anytime.”

And that most definitely did not sound like a promise.


End file.
